April 2, 2009

Should developers be held to moral responsibility within their games?
By Michael Lafferty

Illicit content is being glamorized more and more but is it for good gaming content or just to be edgy and sell games?

Maybe I’m getting older and starting to look beyond the mindset that told me running with scissors was okay. Maybe it’s the fact that I have teen daughters and I’m thinking about their future. Maybe it’s just the fact that games, for lack of new content ideas, are starting to glamorize the wrong elements of our society without presenting consequences for actions.

No, I’m not the voice of the moral minority, but I do think there is a moral obligation on the parts of developers to present illicit behavior for what it is, and not try to make it glamorous and desirable.

What brought all this on? Well, quite frankly, it is the review of the latest GTA title for the DS that allows players to buy and sell drugs as a means to earn money. But don’t think this is harping on GTA – a series that has always tread the bounds of poor taste in one way or another and still managed to emerge smelling golden financially. Drugs have had financial rewards in other games, like Scarface and even EA’s Godfather touches on it.

But let’s look at this another way ... If I hop into my Mustang and go roaring down the highways out in the country, not merely bending the speed limit but scattering it in the exhaust fumes behind my car, top a hill and roar past a state trooper before I see it and exert a little commonsense to slow down, what happens? Well, it really depends on the speed achieved, but there is usually one citation, which then translates into the frowns from my insurance company and maybe a readjustment of my premiums. But hey, I chose to break the speed limit and thus it is reasonable that I pay for the consequences of the actions I initiated.

Perhaps there should be a responsibility on the part of developers to represent that sense of responsibility for actions within games. As it stands now, if you break a law of society within the confines of the game and are busted or killed, the game merely resets. Obviously, gamers don’t want reality intruding too much with games. For example, if a game depicted a hunt by several law enforcement agencies (local and federal) for a renowned drug dealer in a game, and the consequences of being caught was not a game reset to the last save point, but rather game over, start again if you want but at the beginning of the game. Players would likely be annoyed, frustrated and ticked. No one wants to see all their hard work in establishing a character suddenly blown to nothing because they made one silly mistake and got caught. But then again, perhaps – rather than making these illicit activities a cake walk – developers could institute a system where there was punishment that was rather harsh for getting caught in certain activities.

Do developers owe that kind of responsible game design to players? There are those who would argue that they do not. But what’s really the bottom line here? It’s sales and some developers are willing to step well beyond the boundaries of morality, good taste and/or reason in order to try to sell a game.

That, in my opinion, is wrong.

Books, television and films have all stepped across that line more than a few times, but just because games have joined the trend does not make it right. Video-games seem to come under fire much more than other media (of late), and there is no reason why video-game developers need to follow the rest of the lemmings in blindly glamorizing behaviors that I am certain they don’t want their own children emulating. Buck the trend, be creative and original, and maybe a touch responsible.

After all, you have the power and the medium to present moral choices in a manner that hits home harder than other mediums.

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